Their fury gained ardor from the fact that their brother Amzi had never, after he had blinked at them all when they visited him in his private room at the bank the morning after the elopement, mentioned to any living soul the passing of this youngest sister. It had been an occasion to rouse an older brother and the head of his house to some dramatic pronouncement. He should have taken a stand, they said, though just what stand one should take, when one's sister has run off with another man and left a wholly admirable husband and a winsome baby daughter behind, may not, perhaps, have been wholly clear to the minds of the remaining impeccable sisters. They demanded he should confiscate her share of their father's estate as punishment; this should now be Phil's; they wanted this understood and they took care that their friends should know that they had made this demand of Amzi. But a gentleman of philosophic habit and temper, who serenely views the world from his bank's doorstep, need hardly be expected to break his natural reticence to thunder at an erring sister, or even to gladden the gallery (imaginably the whole town that bears his name) by transfers of property, of which he was the lawful trustee, to that lady's abandoned heir. Lois had caused all eyes to focus upon the Montgomerys with a new intentness. Before her escapade they had been accepted as a matter of course; now that she had demonstrated that the Montgomerys were subject to the temptations that beset all mankind, every one became curious as to the further definition of the family weaknesses. The community may be said to have awaited the marriages of the three remaining Montgomery girls in much the same spirit that a family physician awaits the appearance of measles in a child that has been exposed to that malady. And Montgomery was not wholly disappointed. Kate, who like Lois, was a trifle temperamental, had fallen before the charms of one Lawrence Hastings. The manner of Hastings's advent in Montgomery is perhaps worthy of a few words, inasmuch as he came to stay. Hastings was an actor, who visited Montgomery one winter as a member of a company that had trustfully ventured into the provinces with a Shakespearean repertoire. Montgomery was favored in the hope that, being a college town, it would rally to the call of the serious drama. Unfortunately the college was otherwise engaged at the moment with a drama of more contemporaneous interest and authorship. An unusually severe January added to the eager and nipping air upon which the curtain rises in "Hamlet," and proved too much for the well-meaning players. Hastings (so ran tradition) had gallantly bestowed such money as he had upon the ladies of the company to facilitate their flight to New York. His father, a successful manufacturer of codfish packing-boxes at Newburyport, telegraphed money for the prodigal's return with the stipulation that he should forswear the inky cloak and abase himself in the box factory.